More water on my mills, this time from an Op-Ed out of yesterday’s New York Times on Watson, IBM’s AI which will compete in Jeopardy! on Valentine’s day:

It’s remarkable how much of the digital revolution has been driven by games and entertainment. (Powers 2011: WK 10)
    The machine’s one great edge: Watson has no idea that he should be panicking. (Powers 2011: WK 10)
    This raises the question of whether Watson is really answering questions at all or is just noticing statistical correlations in vast amounts of data. But the mere act of building has been a powerful exploration of just what we mean when we talk about knowing. (Powers 2011: WK 10)

Ain’t it wonderful that I can file a newspaper-article on an AI competing at a television game-show under ‘non-fiction?’